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Past haunts the present in troubled subcontinent

Terrorist incidents prompt politicians to issue unequivocal declarations and the media to be definitive. An enraged citizenry's pain has to be shared, anger assuaged, fears addressed. Governments have to do something, anything. But what, exactly, is rarely clear.

Supporters of Jamaat-ud-Dawa rally against restrictions and crackdowns on their organization on Friday in Pakistan. The charity organization delivers food, medicine, tents and social services better than the government. (B.K.BANGASH / AP PHOTO)

Terrorist incidents prompt politicians to issue unequivocal declarations and the media to be definitive. An enraged citizenry's pain has to be shared, anger assuaged, fears addressed. Governments have to do something, anything. But what, exactly, is rarely clear.

The limited policy options available after the Mumbai massacre illustrate the point.

India said the 10 attackers had come from Pakistan. One option was to bomb or launch cruise missiles at suspect terrorist bases in Pakistan. The United States has done that in Syria, to stop the alleged traffic of fighters into Iraq. It is doing so in Pakistan, to stop the infiltration of Taliban into Afghanistan. But the U.S. counselled India not to go across the Pakistan border.

This case of "do as I say, not as I do" springs from the realization that Afghanistan cannot be won without Pakistan. If the Pakistani army has to guard its southern flank with India, it cannot help fight the Taliban in the north.

For years, Pakistan's strategy has been to bleed India in Kashmir, the disputed Muslim-majority border state. It has done so through two proxy militias, from whose ranks the Mumbai murderers came. The gunmen did speak of Indian atrocities in Kashmir and other well-documented ones against the Muslim minority in India.

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Last week, Pakistan arrested the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, and froze the assets of both. It did the same with Lashkar's parent charity organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

This may be just a show. Pakistan had taken similar steps post-9/11, under American pressure, only to quietly let the leaders go.

The groups were created by Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's primary intelligence agency. It wields enormous power – a legacy of the 1979-88 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was the primary vehicle of the Central Intelligence Agency to funnel arms and money to the Afghan Mujahideen – the jihadists that Ronald Reagan loved.

Once the Soviets were driven out, the ISI remained active in Afghanistan and it branched out into Kashmir. The CIA had its Mujahideen, the ISI its Taliban and Lashkar. While the CIA jihad was deemed good, the ISI's twin jihads were not.

The past haunts the present in other embarrassing ways. Among the militants arrested last week was the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attack, Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, a former Mujahid in Afghanistan. Yesterday's hero, today's terrorist.

America does not want to be reminded of any of this. This necessitates layers of deception.

It is said that the ISI has become a force unto itself, not totally under the control of the army. Or that it is under the army's control but its rogue elements are not (like those rogue elements at Abu Ghraib). Or that the Taliban and other groups have outgrown ISI sponsorship and are independent.

So when President Asif Ali Zardari promises to crack down on the militants, he is putting on a show of his own. He cannot deliver. Two incidents show this is so.

On the night of July 26-27, his government announced that it was placing the ISI under civilian control, "with immediate effect." The army intervened instantly and by 3 a.m. the order was reversed.

Post-Mumbai, he said he'd dispatch the director of the ISI to India to help with the probe. Within hours, the army had pushed him back.

Similarly, his conciliatory gestures toward India are taken with a grain of salt. He has adopted a softer stance on Kashmir. He has suggested a no first-use accord on nuclear weapons, something the army opposes. In September, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, he promised Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to expand bilateral trade.

But the Lashkar and Jaish champion a popular cause in Kashmir. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa delivers food, medicine, tents and social services better than the government.

The more Zardari talks of cracking down on these groups, the more he appears to be a puppet of the U.S. and India.

He is already seen as such. While his government says Pakistan's sovereignty is sacrosanct, American drones roam inside Pakistan hitting suspected Taliban-Al-Qaeda targets and killing civilians, fuelling public anger. Zardari has either acquiesced to the covert operations or he is impotent.

On Thursday, thousands of Pakistanis protested, demanding a cut-off of the NATO supply line that runs from the port city of Karachi on land routes to Afghanistan.

Add also the bilateral tensions – Kashmir and the porous Afghan-Pakistan border that the Pushtuns/Taliban criss-cross at will.

There is, obviously, no silver bullet.

But it is encouraging that thoughtful people in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan do see the big picture. So does America, at last. The much-maligned George W. Bush played a key role in averting a possible Indo-Pakistan war in 2002; in defusing tensions after the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul in July, allegedly with ISI support; and in the days after the Mumbai horror.

Barack Obama, too, sees the complex linkages. Besides promising more troops to Afghanistan, he has said that his priority would be to address the problems of the region.

Canada, worried over its own Afghan mission, should think along the same lines.

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